Curator's Choice: 10 Modern Poetry Pamphlets

Chosen by Dr Richard Price, Head of Modern British Collections,
The British Library

What is a pamphlet? This can be a question on the lines of “How
long is a piece of string?” but for these purposes it’s
simply a short book – say, 36 pages or less. The pamphlet has
been an important communicator of political and religious ideas over
the centuries but it is poetry and poetry alone that is the subject
here.

A pamphlet is usually a stapled booklet without a hard binding but
our working definition is what we hope is a generous one, so it can
still be a hardback: two hardbound heavyweights were T. S. Eliot’s
The Waste Land and Philip Larkin’s The North Ship, both 35 pages,
each weighing in just within our upper limit.

The list below only scratches the surface of pamphlet poetry. It’s
tempting to open the doors more internationally – in which case
La prose du Transsibérien (1913) by Blaise Cendrars with images
by Sonia Delaunay – would be a wonderful example. This long poem
about an imagined trip on the Trans-Siberian Express is unfolded as
one colourful sheet, a beautifully imagined rendering of the poem.

Eliot’s The Waste Land, mentioned above, would also be there
but for a much larger selection with this title that had been published
in the United States in the previous year. Even so this is a key twentieth
century text in all its concentration: the poem, the whole poem and
nothing but the poem. It was published in Richmond, Surrey, by Leonard
and Virginia Woolf in the Hogarth Press imprint.

North of the border, a 1940 book with the utilitarian title 17 Poems
for 6d contained poems in Gaelic, Scots and English. It announced what
would come to be the towering presence in modern Gaelic poetry of Sorley
Maclean and the master of Edinburgh Scots Robert Garioch. Seamus Heaney’s
Eleven Poems (Festival Publications, 1965) is also notable: this sixteen
page publication was the first book by the poet who later became a Nobel
laureate. By the time it was published Heaney was already signed by
the large independent Faber, who published Death of a Naturalist the
following year. Other poets in the Festival pamphlet series included
several now widely acclaimed, including Michael Longley, Derek Mahon
and John Montague.

1. Edward Thomas, Six Poems [1916]. Published under
the pseudonym Edward Eastaway this is the only book of poems published
by Thomas in his lifetime. It is a glimpse of the lyric poetry which
only fully emerged posthumously, helping to re-focus English poetry
in the direction of a subtle, sometimes angry, plain-speaking lyric.
(British Library shelfmark: 11642.h.49)

quotation: “This is no case of petty right or wrong / That politicians
or philosopher / Can judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hot / With
love of Englishmen, to please newspapers.”

2. W. H. Auden, Poems (1928). This was printed by
Auden’s friend Stephen Spender – initially quite badly –
on the kind of press used for printing prescriptions. It was later finished
by a professional printer, the Holywell Press in Oxford. (British Library
shelfmark: C.190.aa.24)

3. Dylan Thomas, 18 poems (Sunday Referee and Parton Bookshop,
1934). The Welsh master’s debut was published after Thomas
had won a competition in the Sunday Referee national newspaper. It was
co-published by the Referee and the legendary alternative bookshop.
Thomas was barely out of his teens. (British Library shelfmark: Cup.403.d.1.)

quotation: “Especially when the October wind / With frosty fingers
punishes my hair, / Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire / And
cast a shadow crab upon the land,”

4. Philip Larkin, The North Ship (Fortune Press, 1945).
In a way a false start – in later books Larkin sloughed off the
Auden and Yeats influences he displays here – but Larkin’s
lonely melancholy is already present. (British Library shelfmark: Larkin
35)

quotation: “Heaviest of flowers, the head / Forever hangs above
a stormless bed.”

quotation: “The society of singing birds and the society of mechanical
hammers inhabit the world together, slightly ruffled and confined by
each other’s presence.”

6. Ian Hamilton Finlay, Glasgow
Beasts, An a Burd, Haw, An Inseks, An, Aw, A Fush (papercuts by John
Picking and design by Pete McGinn; 1961). A charming book that
combines Glaswegian, the ancient idea of a bestiary (about the secret
life of creatures) and high production values. Despite or because of
the lightness of touch it was controversial, offending some who weren’t
open to the expressive potential of urban Scots. (British Library shelfmark:
Cup.510.cop.1)

quotation: “see me / wan time / ah wis a fox / an wis ah sleekit!”

7. Bob Cobbing, Six Sound Poems (Writers Forum, 1968).
Many of Bob Cobbing’s books were in pamphlet form. He was a founder
of Writers Forum which published hundreds of stapled books by himself
and by other poets. Some moved onto other kinds of writing - the US
political writer P. J. O’Rourke for example, who had an early
avant-garde collection published by the press. Some, like Maggie O’Sullivan
and Bill Griffiths, continued to develop their poetry using the small
presses. Cobbing was famed for his sound poetry performances but on
the page he was also a visual poet, experimenting with fonts, collage,
overlays and the full space of the page. (British Library shelfmark:
YA.2003.b.3717)

quotation: “wan / do / tree / fear / fife”

8. J. H. Prynne, Fire Lizard (The Blacksuede Boot Press, 1970).
Prynne is perhaps the pamphlet poet par excellence – many of his
works exist first as individual sequences published as short books by
small presses. This press was run by fellow poets Barry Macsweeney and
Elaine Randell. Lyrical and many-layered, Prynne’s poetry rewards
the contemplation given space by the pamphlet’s physical form.
(British Library shelfmark: Cup.501.h.41).

quotation: “Still I love you. / That’s the reason too.”

9. Denise Riley, Marxism for infants (Street Editions 1977).
An early book by a poet who is regarded as both a lyrical and avant-garde
writer (see also her pamphlet collaboration with Wendy Mulford, No Fee:
A Line or Two for Free, Street Editions, 1978). Riley is concerned especially
with the way that domestic and everyday language shapes and challenges
identity. (British Library shelfmark: YA.1993.b.442)

quotation: “hold fast in arms before astonished eyes / whom you
must grasp through great changes / constant and receptive as a capital
city”

10. Kathleen Jamie, Black Spiders (Salamander, 1982).
The debut of a poet later acclaimed for her travel writing and the lyric
power of her poetry. (British Library shelfmark: X.950/28488)

quotation: “Every taken chasing step / in the parting dark /
from the old barred door / made a few stars fade.”